An artist's rendition of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Credit: NASA.
RESEARCH PROJECTS
Studying Exoplanetary Systems Along Stellar Streams with TESS.
Second Undergraduate Thesis (September 2022 - April 2023)
This project focused on resolving exoplanets along stellar streams using synthetic images from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Working under the supervision of Professor Jeremy Webb, Daniella investigated a simulated stellar stream at three ages after dissolution (1.088 Gyr, 2.026 Gyr, and 3.390 Gyr) and at three different locations in its orbit around the galactic centre (ɸoffset = 0, π/2, and π) to assess whether the parameters of TESS (pixel size, resolution) meet the specific requirements (angular separation and density of stars along the stream, stellar magnitudes) needed to observe planetary systems around stars in the stellar stream.
Project deliverables were two presentations and a final report.
Identifying Astrometric Exoplanet Candidates in Gaia Data Release 3.
Trottier Summer Internship at the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (May - August 2022)
During the summer of 2022, Daniella worked jointly at the
Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx)
at the Université de Montréal and
Planétarium Rio Tinto Alcan
under the supervision of
Professor Jonathan Gagné.
This project primarily focused on the identification of astrometric exoplanet candidates
in Gaia Data Release 3 (DR3). Sorting and filtering many properties of stars in the data,
Daniella identified 284 candidate exoplanet host stars, 34 of which are young stars that were then sent for direct imaging.
During this internship, Daniella was given the opportunity to visit the
Observatoire Mont Mégantic
twice. On the first visit,
the observatory technician guided Daniella and two other inters on how to use the telescopes and software (PESTO and CPAPIR).
On the second visit, Daniella instructed two other interns on these instruments.
Deliverables for this work included a final presentation to all iREx members.
iREx Facebook Interview Features
Lookback at the iREx 2022 summer internships
UofT's Undergraduate Research Conference 2023
Understanding and Mapping Galaxy Evolution by Analyzing Morphology in Hubble eXtreme Deep Field Observations.
First Undergraduate Thesis (September 2021 - April 2022)
The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field. Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team.
In a continuation of the work done in the Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP), this Undergraduate Thesis was also under the supervision of Dr. Lamiya Mowla and Dr. Kartheik Iyer and spanned from September 2021 to April 2022. For this thesis, Daniella used the pipeline that was developed in summer 2021 to measure the morphology of galaxies in the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF). Measuring the half-light and half-mass radii - that is, the circular apertures containing half the image's flux - of galaxies reveals characteristics of morphological poperties such as stellar mass and specific star formation rate. These measurements were found for the XDF galaxies which were larger than 100 pixels on the field and had redshift 0.5 < z < 6. This work is vital to understanding and predicting both galaxy morphology and evolution.
Deliverables for this work included a project proposal, three presentations and a final report.
What does morphology tell us? Understanding galaxy evolution through the lens of galaxy shapes and sizes.
Summer Undergraduate Research Program at the University of Toronto (May - August 2021)
During the summer of 2021, Daniella had the opportunity to participate in the Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP)
in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto.
Under the supervision of Dr. Lamiya Mowla and
Dr. Kartheik Iyer, Daniella developed a pipeline to analyze
morphological characteristics of galaxies in simulations and observations. This pipeline, written in Python coding language,
uses packages such as statmorph (Rodriguez-Gomez et al., 2019) and
imcascade (Miller & van Dokkum, 2021) to fit galaxies and measure
physical properties. During development and after completion, this pipeline was applied to SIMBA simulated galaxies and
corresponding mock observation images of these simulations.
During this program, Daniella was given the opportunity to attend a professional development presentation series and
an introduction to astrophysics research lecture series (Astro 101). Further, Daniella also audited an Introduction to
Computational Astrophysics course (CTA200H).
Deliverables for this work included a poster presentation
and a research summary.
SURP Student Spotlight
SURP Student Project & Deliverables
Behavioural and Pathological Characterization of Prodromal Alzheimer's Disease in the TgF344-AD rat model.
Sunnybrook Research Institute Summer Student Research Program (May - August 2019)
During the summer of 2019, Daniella worked in the laboratory of Dr. JoAnne McLaurin at Sunnybrook Research Institute (SRI). The project was centered around the behavioural and palothogical characterization of prodromal Alzheimer's Disease in the TgF344-AD rat model at 4, 6, 9 and 12 months of age.
The behavioural characterization work to which Daniella contributed was analzying pre-recorded Barnes maze trials and classifying the behaviour
according to the spatial strategies detailed in Illouz et al. (2016).
The pathology side of the project included performing neuronal immunostaining for NeuN and GAD67 expression on 12-month old rat brain samples with 40-micron thickness.
Daniella then used a light, fluorescence and confocal microscopes to image the stained sections and ImageJ software to process images and quantify the number of
cells and stain density within brain regions. This summer work also included other side projects and tasks that contributed to other work being done in the lab.
The other branches of this project included sectioning the rat brains into 40-micron layers and performing Laser Capture
Microdissection to collect samples of blood vessels in the brain for RNA isolation.
Deliverables for this work included a poster presentation to a panel of judges and SRI employees.